For TMR's final programme of 2015 we are joined by Dr. Mike Spaulding, Senior Pastor of Calvary Chapel, Lima and host of Soaring Eagle Radio, for a discussion on the subject of Biblical Hermeneutics.

Isn't it obvious how we should read the Bible? After all, if it says such-and-such, surely it means such-and-such, and that's the end of the matter? Or is it really always quite so straightforward? Drawing upon his many years of study, grounded in the context of pastoral ministry, Dr. Spaulding guides us through the maze of biblical hermeneutics - observation, interpretation and application - and shares with us some invaluable tools that can help us unlock the plain meaning of the Scriptures.

Mike Spaulding was ordained to the ministry in 1998, and hold a PhD in Apologetics from Trinity Theological Seminary. He is the author of innumerable articles appearing in various publications by LifeWay Publishers, Baker Publishing and several online apologetics ministries. He maintains two blogs – The Transforming Word and Dr. Mike Spaulding – and teaches on The Transforming Word radio show, heard on radio stations throughout the Midwest United States.

British film-maker, 9/11 Truth activist, and fellow Christian, Tony Rooke returns to the progamme to introduce his new film INCONTROVERTIBLE, "the first and only feature-length documentary" to portray the "candid views of Police Officers, Firefighters and Soldiers... about the official explanation for the events of 9/11."

(In 2013 Tony Rooke hit the headlines as he was summonsed to court for not paying his TV licence. In his defence he appealed to the UK Terrorism Act 2000, arguing that much of the BBC's coverage of 9/11 — and 7/7, the London Bombings — had been so disingenuous as to serve as a cover-up for the real criminals in each case, and that to have paid his licence fee to the BBC would have been to have committed a much more serious offence under the Act.)

We are joined again by Dr. Duke Pesta, professor of English at The University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, and Academic Director of FreedomProject Education, for an update on Common Core, the US education system's so-called "Common Core State Standards Initiative".

Touted as "a set of high-quality academic standards in mathematics and English... created to ensure that all students graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college, career, and life, regardless of where they live",* Common Core sounds almost too good to be true.

And so it is, according to Dr. Pesta, who explains that far from raising standards, Common Core actually lowers them, in the interests of engineering a compliant Global Citizenry for the nascent One-World Corporatist State.

Once again we welcome to the programme Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former US Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, who joins us to give his reaction to the Paris Attacks of 13th November, assessing them in relation to current and historical geopolitical realities. In the second half of the interview Dr. Roberts shares with us his analysis of the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) and other so-called "trade deals" such as TTIP and TiSA, and raises the question as to whether we are seeing, in these developments, the dawn of the New World Order.

"There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this, Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever." (Orwell, 1984)

Remember what the world used to be like - before 2013 - when all our electronic communications were being scooped up by intelligence agencies and stored in massive data silos? Well now, thanks to Edward Snowden.... well, what?

This week we welcome back to the programme writer, researcher and fim-maker Tom Secker of SpyCulture.com, InvestigatingTheTerror.com and the fascinating podcast ClandesTime, who joins us for an in-depth and entertaining discussion on his controversial, yet intriguing, take on the whole Edward Snowden phenomenon. Is Snowden everything he seems to be? Were his NSA "revelations" really as significant as has almost universally been claimed? Or are there reasons to suspect that this might have been all officially sanctioned: an elaborate limited hangout for the purposes of normalisation and control?

This week we welcome to the programme Manoj Raithatha, head of the South Asian Forum of the UK Evangelical Alliance, who joins us to share his inspiring testimony and to discuss his approach to evangelism and Christian engagement with people from Asian backgrounds.

Manoj Raithatha, who is director of the course Discovering Jesus Through Asian Eyes, has been a teacher, a BAFTA award-winning TV writer and a highly-successful property entrepreneur. Though raised as a Hindu, in 2008 he became a Christian, partly due to the miraculous healing of his young son and the love shown to him and his family during their time of greatest need. Today, Manoj continues to run his property business, but with new God-centred priorities, and heads up Instant Apostle publishing house and the South Asian Forum, a grouping within the UK Evangelical Alliance set up to unite and connect the South Asian Christian community.

This week we welcome to the programme David Conn of TruthSleuth.net for an in-depth discussion on the so-called Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ and its manipulative founder Jim Jones, under whose "leadership" over nine hundred people were killed in a mass "suicide/murder" on the 18th of November 1978 in northwestern Guyana.

David Conn, who investigated Jones for eight years prior to the Jonestown Massacre, shares with us his own story of how he tried to expose and warn people about Jim Jones, and helps us to form some kind of understanding of the charismatic-yet-dangerous Jones and the psychological, spiritual and social factors that allowed such a man to rise to a position of power and influence.

This week we welcome Dr. Peter Phillips, professor of Sociology at Sonoma University, who joins us to discuss the secretive and elitist Bohemian Club whose annual campground meeting at Bohemian Grove in California is attended by some of the richest and most influential men in the world. Dr. Phillips, whose PhD (1994, University of California, Davis) centres in this very subject, joins us to discuss the Club's history and to assess its significance in the contemporary world.

Many of Dr. Phillips' investigative research studies are available at Project Censored (of which he was Director, 1996 - 2000) including: Law-Enforcement-Related Deaths in the US; Financial Core of the Transnational Corporate Class; The Global Dominance Group: 9/11 Pre-Warnings & Election Irregularities in Context; A Study of Bias in the Associated Press; The Left Progressive Media: Inside the Propaganda Model; and many more.

The end of poverty and hunger! Good education and jobs for all! Decent shelter and a healthy life for every citizen of the world! Who could disagree with aspirations as lofty as these? So read the Goals of the UN's 2030 Agenda, a document shortly to be signed up to by the world's leaders at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in New York (25 and 26 September).

But, asks our guest, Patrick M. Wood, are these goals for real? Or are they in reality part of a grand bait-and-switch scheme, first to entice us to embrace a utopian vision for the world, and then to lock us into an authoritarian system of Technocracy?

Patrick M. Wood is an author and lecturer who has stud­ied elite globalisation policies since the late 1970s, when he partnered with the late Antony C. Sutton to co-author Trilaterals Over Washington, Volumes I and II, and he remains a leading expert on the elitist Tri­lateral Commission. An economist by education, a financial analyst and writer by profession, and an Amer­ican Constitutionalist by choice, Wood maintains a biblical worldview and has deep historical insights into modern attacks on sovereignty, property rights and personal freedom. A frequent speaker on radio shows around the U.S., Wood's cur­rent work centres in Technocracy, Transhumanism and Scientism, and how these are transforming global economics, politics and religion. As he says, the endgame is scientific dictatorship; we ignore it our peril.

For the fourteenth anniversary of 9/11 and to begin the Autumn season of programmes here at TMR, we welcome Richard Gage AIA, a San Francisco Bay Area architect for 28 years, a member of the American Institute of Architects, and the founder and CEO of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

Mr. Gage shares with us his journey towards questioning the official narrative about 9/11, explains the work of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth and describes the effect its activism is having in raising awareness of this important issue both in the US and across the globe. We also discuss elements of the case he makes against the official story of the destruction of the World Trade Center Twin Towers and Building 7, and take the opportunity for Mr. Gage to answer a few questions from TMR listeners.

During his architectural career, Richard Gage has worked on most types of building construction, including numerous fire-proofed, steel-framed buildings, and most recently worked on the construction documents for a $400M mixed-use urban project with 1.2 million square feet of retail, a parking structure, and 320,000 square feet of mid-rise office space.

What is the so-called "Greek Debt Crisis"? Is it simply the result of economic mismanagement by the Greek people and their successive governments, or is there more to it than meets the eye?

Joining us to answer this question, we welcome once again Dr. Paul Craig Roberts (former US Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy), who explains that the crisis is not fundamentally about debt at all, but rather the playing out of a strategy by the financial and political elites to establish two main principles: the looting of European countries by the "One Percent", and the systematic destruction of their national sovereignty.

We also discuss the Iran Nuclear Deal and the recent address by UK Prime Minister David Cameron on "extremism" (described by Glenn Greenwald as "one of the creepiest and most authoritarian speeches you'll ever hear.")

We are joined once again by Dr. Graeme MacQueen, co-editor of The Journal of 9/11 Studies, for an in-depth discussion on his research into eyewitness evidence of explosions in the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.

"Many of us are convinced that the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were brought down on September 11, 2001 through controlled demolition. But the question at once arises: if this is what happened, would somebody not have noticed? The answer is that many people did notice. There is a good deal of eyewitness evidence for the demolition of buildings 1 and 2."

This week TMR is delighted to present an entertaining and very musical interview with all four members of Dissident Prophet, the fantastic Christian indie rock band from Birmingham, UK.

Hot on the heels of the recent release of their latest album, Red Moon Rising, Andy Jennings, Melanie J., Tom Livemore and Robbie Maxwell join Julian Charles to talk about faith, music and the ongoing mission of the band to draw people to Jesus through prophetic song.

Included in the programme are five tracks from the new album - "Dig", "Comfortable in Babylon", "Human 2.0", "Writing on the Wall" and "He Sat Down" - plus the earlier song "Man from the Sky".

Speaking from his passion for authentic spirituality, transformative community and artisanal living, John J. Thompson reflects upon the growing phenomenon of the handcrafted and small-batch culture, and asks whether this intensifying counterpoint to the one-size-fits-all world of corporate mass-production might have something important to say about Jesus and our relationship with Him.

"Is it possible that our culture's re-engagement with handcrafted local things and experiences might contain the echo of a 'still small voice' calling us home to our truer selves? What might a batch of artisanal chocolate, or a fresh-baked loaf of bread, or a cup of home-roasted carefully-brewed coffee, tell us about ourselves, our nature, or our faith?"

This week we are once again joined by Dr. Tim Ball, retired professor of Climatology at the University of Winnipeg, for a wide-ranging conversation centred in the subject of... maps!

Ours is a multidimentional world, yet the ways in which we represent that reality to ourselves - and, perhaps more worryingly, find that reality represented to us by others - is very often "two-dimensional" (speaking both literally and figuratively). Join us as we think about Representation and Reality, and consider some of the problems that can arise when we mistakenly read the Map as if it's faithful to Reality itself.

(Please note: The Mind Renewed will now be taking a Half-Term break for two weeks.)

What are the New Testament Gospels? How should we read them in relation to each other? And are they really "full of contradictions", as some would say?

This week we welcome Dr. Mike Licona, associate professor of theology at Houston Baptist University, who joins us for an extended in-depth discussion on the New Testament Gospels and the differences between them. Drawing upon his many years of research into the subject, Dr. Licona leads us through the maze of questions often asked about the NT Gospels, and explains how familiarity with the literary conventions of Graeco-Roman biography and historiography can help to provide compelling answers.

For our second interview this week we welcome Dr. Simon Pardoe, director of "Vote Or Vote NONE" (VoteNone.org.uk), who joins us to discuss the hopes, aims and merits of that campaign as we approach the UK General (S)election on the 7th of May 2015.

"Faced with the overwhelming public anger at UK politics, and determination not to vote, I found myself suggesting people Vote NONE as the only potential form of participation. Surprisingly, it shifted those conversations from anger about UK politicians to a shared concern about how to revitalise UK democracy and improve UK politics. I realised that whereas not voting can be an end to thinking and engagement, the option to Vote NONE can re-engage people in thinking about politics and democracy. Suddenly there’s no reason to be silent, and every reason to think about what to do." (Simon Pardoe)

Our first guest this week is Simon Krimms, author of the new and remarkable children-cum-grown-ups' book Rollerdog, that touches on many of the issues examined here at TMR.

Simon Krimms is an English teacher and voluntaryist, born in the US and raised in Australia, who has lived and worked in Japan since 2004. He began writing books for children in 2006 after becoming aware of the questions surrounding the official account of 9/11. His first book Rollerdog (available at Krimms.com) is designed for "little people growing up in the brave new world (order) of the 21st Century. Rather than instilling fear in young minds, the storyline about Humphry the Rollerdog creates an image of hope, while the illustrations, which are crafted for deeper interpretation by adult readers, deliver a message of warning..."

In some ways a follow-up from our previous conversation with him, which concentrated on the Trilateral Commission and its technocratic quest for a "New International Economic Order", this interview centres in Technocracy itself and explores some of the key ways in which its utopian goals are being pursued in the world today.

Patrick Wood is an author and lecturer who has stud­ied elite globalisation policies since the late 1970s, when he partnered with the late Antony C. Sutton to co-author Trilaterals Over Washington, Volumes I and II, and he remains a leading expert on the elitist Tri­lateral Commission. An economist by education, a financial analyst and writer by profession, and an Amer­ican Constitutionalist by choice, Wood maintains a biblical worldview and has deep historical insights into modern attacks on sovereignty, property rights and personal freedom. A frequent speaker on radio shows around the U.S., Wood's cur­rent work centres in Technocracy, Transhumanism and Scientism, and how these are transforming global economics, politics and religion. As he says, the endgame is scientific dictatorship; we ignore it our peril.

To begin the summer season of programmes here at TMR, we welcome back Nick Peters of Deeper Waters Christian Ministries, who joins us for an in-depth discussion on the subject of Mythicism, or Christ Myth Theory.

Was Jesus of Nazareth a real person of history? Or was he, perhaps, originally a mythical character, whose story gradually came to be understood as historical through processes of allegorisation and misunderstanding? Alternatively, was he a Roman invention? With reference to some of the ideas of writers such as Earl Doherty, Richard Carrier, Robert M. Price and Joseph Atwill, we discuss the plausibility of mythicists' attempts to revise the history of Christian origins, and conclude that the hypothesis of Jesus' existence best fits the evidence.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts (former US Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy) returns to the programme for an extended interview on the ongoing tensions between Washington and Moscow.

Drawing upon his extensive experience in government, academia and journalism, Dr. Roberts explains how Washington's current hostility towards Russia, with its demonisation of Vladimir Putin, is a bitter fruit of the neoconservative ideology of world hegemony that came to dominate US centres of power from the early 1990s onwards. Assessing the geopolitical landscape with an eye to historical, economic and political realities, Dr. Roberts judges there to be only two hopes for the world to avert nuclear Armageddon: a Europe decisively resistant to Washington diktat, or economic collapse of the US empire itself.

We also discuss the murder of Boris Nemtsov, prospects for Washington-agitated colour revolutions in Central Asia/Caucasus, MH17 and the growth of the police state in the US.

This week we welcome Dr. Katherine Albrecht, privacy researcher, consumer advocate and bestselling author, who joins us for a wide-ranging discussion centred in her fascinating and compelling hypothesis that "the mark of the Beast" in the Book of Revelation might one day see literal fulfilment in the form of electronic identification devices implanted into human beings.

"He also caused everyone (small and great, rich and poor, free and slave) to obtain a mark on their right hand or on their forehead. Thus no one was allowed to buy or sell things unless he bore the mark of the beast – that is, his name or his number." (Rev. 13:16f, NET Bible)

Mindful of recent news that managers at an office block in Stockholm are inviting workers to receive RFID implants in the hand for the sake of ease and efficiency, Dr. Albrecht decribes her successful battle against the dangerous use of RFID implant technology, and explains how an experience of God in 1999 set her on the path of warning the world about the growing infrastructure of surveillance and control.

Dr. Katherine Albrecht is senior executive with the private search engines StartPage and Ixquick, is on the team behind the new privacy-protecting email program StartMail, and holds a Doctorate in Human Development and Consumer Education from Harvard University.

Our guest this week is the one and only Natalina, host of Beyond Extraordinary Radio and blogger at ExtraordinaryIntelligence.com, who joins us to share her unique and moving testimony.

Once an adherent of various New Age philosophies, Natalina began the Extraordinary Intelligence website as a place to chronicle her search after truth, which at the time she was pursuing through investigations into the New Age and the Occult. But, although her website gained considerable attention in alternative and paranormal circles, everything changed for her when she had a remarkable encounter with God, since when she has devoted her life to Jesus Christ, and her website changed to become a ministry devoted to exposing the New Age and helping people to understand the world from a Christian worldview perspective.

This week we welcome Rev. Dr. Robert H. Bennett, Executive Director of Luther Academy in Fort Wayne Indiana and specialist in missions, for a fascinating conversation on his research into demon possession and spiritual warfare in the context of Madagascar.

In 2007, while on a trip to Madagascar, Dr. Bennett experienced something that was to have a profound effect on his future research and ministry: in the midst of a Lutheran worship service, right at his feet, a woman began to convulse and receive calm and controlled exorcism ministry from members of the congregation.

Through the field research that followed, Dr. Bennett investigated the indigenous animism of the Malagasy people, and sought to understand the role of exorcism in the mission of the Lutheran Church of Madagascar.

Based on this research, in 2013 he published the book, I Am Not Afraid : Demon Possession and Spiritual Warfare : True Accounts from the Lutheran Church of Madagascar, a scholarly work that not only documents his findings and sets them in the context of biblical practice and church history, but issues a challenge to the too-often-spiritually-compromised church in the West: exorcism is, and always has been, part of the ministry of Christ through the Church, and we neglect it at our peril.

What is "Green Religion"? Is it having an impact on modern environmentalism? And what effect is it having on the way people think and behave? Joining us to discuss these issues is Dr. James Wanliss, Associate Professor of Physics at Presbyterian College, Clinton, South Carolina, and author of the book: Resisting the Green Dragon; Dominion, Not Death.

Dr. Wanliss holds degrees in Applied Mathematics and Physics (from the University of Cape Town), a Master's in Geophysics (from the University of Witwatersrand) and a PhD in Physics (from the University of Alberta, Canada). His scientific interests centre in plasma physics, nonlinear dynamics, and space weather; he has published over 60 peer-reviewed scientific articles, mainly in the Journal of Geophysical Research and Geophysical Research Letters; and he has also published in psychology and medical areas, and popular Christian journals.

This week we welcome Dr. Stephanie Seneff, a Senior Research Scientist at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, for an in-depth (and sometimes slightly technical) conversation on the subject of glyphosate, the world's most popular herbicide.

Marketed as Roundup by Monsanto, and most famously used in combination with Roundup Ready® GMO crops, glyphosate is officially considered to be of minimal risk to human beings when used as directed. But is that really true? After several years of research - drawing upon studies into the effects of glyphosate on animals, and persuasive statistical correlations between the increase in glyphosate usage and the upsurge in various human illnesses, most notably autism - Dr. Seneff reaches a conclusion very different from the official line: Glyphosate, she believes, is a major risk to human health and needs to be removed from our environment as soon as possible.

Our guest this week is Swiss historian Dr. Daniele Ganser, author of the seminal book NATO's Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe, who joins us for a fascinating (though at times unsettling) conversation on the subject of Operation GLADIO.

Shortly after WWII a Europe-wide network of secret armies was organised under the aegis of NATO, tasked with providing military and intelligence resistance in the event of a feared Soviet invasion. Modelled on the resistance movements of the war years, many of these "stay behind" units remained faithful to their original mandate. But by the early 1960s - under the pressures of anti-communist politicking and flirtations with the Far Right - some of these groups began to morph into something more sinister, linking up with extreme right-wingers who carried out acts of false-flag terrorism, harassment of left-wing parties and coups d'état.

But was this morphing simply an unforseen consequence of the unaccountability and instability of the network itself? Or was it, at least in part, engineered by the very Anglo-American establishment which gave birth to the project in the first place? And to what extent, therefore, can such acts of terror be seen as manifestations of 'the strategy of tension', carried out by the State against its own citizens for the purposes of control at home and geopolitical gain abroad? (We also discuss: Operation Northwoods, the so-called War on Terror, 9/11 and the recent Charlie Hebdo attacks.)

We are joined again by biblical scholar Robert M. Bowman Jnr., Executive Director of the Institute for Religious Research (IRR.org), for an in-depth and penetrating critique of Bart D. Ehrman's book, How Jesus Became God : The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee.

A respected New Testament textual scholar and a gifted writer, Bart Ehrman argues that neither Jesus nor his earliest disciples considered him divine in any sense during his earthly ministry; but that, following his Resurrection (or, at least, following his disciples' belief in his Resurrection), a process quickly began whereby Jesus became viewed as increasingly exalted, leading to his eventually being considered equal to God.

But how secure is Ehrman's thesis? Did Jesus really "become" divine, in the eyes of his followers, after his death? Or did Jesus appear on the scene as God Incarnate: a reality experienced by his disciples and expressed in the pages of the New Testament?